Who said what are men compared to rocks and mountains?

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Where you've heard it
Pretentious Factor

― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

Abstract

[Extract] One of the criticisms most often levelled at Pride and Prejudice focuses on the novel's self-imposed constraints and its alleged disjunction from momentous contemporary events, as well as from a considerable gamut of human emotions and experience. Charlotte Brontë articulated this view-point well in an often quoted letter to G.H. Lewes of 1848:

Why do you like Miss Austen so very much? I am puzzled on that point [...] I had not seen Pride and Prejudice till I read that sentence of yours, and then I got the book. And what did I find? An accurate daguerreotyped portrait of a commonplace face; a carefully fenced, highly cultivated garden, with neat borders and delicate flowers; but no glance of a bright, vivid physiognomy, no open country, no fresh air, no blue hill, no bonny beck. I should hardly like to live with her ladies and gentlemen, in their elegant but confined houses.

And Austen herself seemed virtually to anticipate some of these reservations in a letter of 1813, a year notable alike for the appearance of Pride and Prejudice and for fateful Napoleonic campaigns. Her novel, she conceded, was "rather too light, and bright, and sparkling; it wants shade; it wants to be stretched out here and there" to embrace wider issues, such as "Walter Scott, or the history of Buonaparté [sic], or anything that would form a contrast, and bring the reader with increased delight to the playfulness and epigrammatism of the general style". The bulk of her readers of course have demurred, as Austen predicted her correspondent would do ("I doubt your quite agreeing with me here"). They have happily embraced the novel's sparkling comedy of manners, joyed in the author's intelligence and deftness of touch, and in the seemingly satisfying resolution of the plots various romantic conundrums. But 200 years after its publication Pride and Prejudice is still dogged intermittently by the charge of bright superficiality and lack of 'shade' – a charge which this essay seeks to reassess in terms of modern expectations, the novel's preoccupations and its much-debated conclusion.

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This line is from the novel Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (1813).

Before there was Downton Abbey, there was Pride and Prejudice, that classic novel about rich and/or semi-rich English people spending a lot of time worrying about class and marriage. This particular book tells the story of the plucky, middle-class Elizabeth Bennet, who, despite her best efforts, falls for that insufferable rich guy Mr. Darcy. This quote comes when Lizzy is excited about taking in some nature in the Lake District.

Where you've heard it

You might've heard the line in any of the many film adaptations of the book, like this one with Keira Knightly, or maybe this one with Colin Firth. We don't know if the line will be used in the movie version of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, but we can dream.

Pretentious Factor

If you were to drop this quote at a dinner party, would you get an in-unison "awww" or would everyone roll their eyes and never invite you back? Here it is, on a scale of 1-10.

As evidence by its many, many adaptations, Pride and Prejudice is a well-known, well-loved classic. Still, this is one of the more obscure of its famous quotes ("It is a truth universally acknowledged," anyone?), so we'll give it a bump on the scale.

“What are men to rocks and mountains? Oh! what hours of transport we shall spend! And when we do return, it shall not be like other travellers, without being able to give one accurate idea of any thing. We will know where we have gone—we will recollect what we have seen. Lakes, mountains, and rivers shall not be jumbled together in our imaginations….”

—from Pride and Prejudice, Volume 2, Chapter 4

Cascade Ponds

Cascade Mountain

Last week I spent a couple of hours in Banff, Alberta, and naturally I thought of what Elizabeth Bennet says about mountains in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice when she accepts an invitation to travel with her uncle and aunt, Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner, possibly as far as the Lakes.

Bow Falls

Crossing the Bow River on the Banff Pedestrian Bridge

Today is the 199th anniversary of Jane Austen’s death. She died in Winchester, at the age of 41, on July 18, 1817.

Looking at Mount Rundle from the Bow Falls Trail